Wulf's Webden

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17 November 2024
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Scoring

Jane and I are looking after the Christmas music for the training band and one or two of the pieces are missing master scores. In particular there is a jaunty piece that suits the build up to Christmas called Jingo Jango. It isn’t too difficult but manages to rise above the pedestrian standards of some simple arrangements. However, the conductor only had a copy of the flute part to work from, which isn’t much help when the flutes take an extended rest!

I already had the tuba and clarinet 3 parts (me and Jane) typed up on MuseScore and I’ve now fed enough additional parts in to have a much better representation of what is going on across the band. I continue to be very impressed with what MuseScore can accomplish, including the playback side, and it is a real boon for this kind of task.

16 November 2024
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Saturday Sing Around – 16 Nov 2024

I took the double bass down to today’s sing around. It was the busiest it has been for a long while so only a couple of songs to lead on from me although plenty else to busk along to. My contributions were I’ll Fly Away and Wade in the Water, both from the broad category of gospel blues, easy to lead and easy for others to join in on. I almost did I Won’t Back Down (Tom Petty) as my second tune but, as a song I haven’t led before, decided at the last moment that the melody wasn’t quite clear enough in my head. Maybe next time… although I’ll be missing the next two fortnightly sessions due to concert band commitments.

15 November 2024
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Yellow Iris

Outside, the weather is getting chilly, with frosts expected next week. However, inside, I’ve got round to uploading a set of brighter photos from late spring 2023, including this beautiful yellow iris:

Yellow Iris - close-up

14 November 2024
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Tidying up and throwing out

I’ve been doing some tidying up today. Do I still need a CD to install Windows XP, extension cable for a landline telephone or manuals for soundcards and monitors I got rid of well over a decade ago? I don’t like to throw things away too quickly but those are all examples of items where I decided it is time to stop making space for them.

Is there a chance I’ll regret making some of those decisions? Possibly but, as I didn’t remember for sure that I still had some of those things, probably not. As a bonus, I’ve also found a few things that I was pretty sure I still had but which I had mislaid (like a transcription of the banjo and guitar piece Duelling Banjos) so I think it will be a win overall.

13 November 2024
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Rhubarb

Mid November isn’t a great time to be picking rhubarb. The fleshy stems and large leaves have died back and the dark stumps of the plants are easily lost to sight. However, while the ground is moist and not yet frozen is a good time to transplant it. That’s what I was doing this morning, moving our rhubarb from the back garden to the allotment.

At the allotment it should do well with a lot more sun than the almost perpetually shady spot it lived in at home. Also, once it gets established, rhubarb is a very low maintenance plant. It is highly acidic and not a favourite of critters that gobble up other leafy plants.

I’ll have to wait until next year to find out if the move has been a success but this week – warm days and a bit of rain due at the weekend before we are probably going to start getting frosts – is probably as good as I could have hoped for.

12 November 2024
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Welby Gone

As I drove home from band practise tonight, I heard the news that Justin Welby had, after all, stepped down in the row about safeguarding around the alleged abuses by the late John Smyth. I say alleged because I think they haven’t been tried in court but that failure to act early enough for Smyth to be prosecuted before his death in 2018 was the nub of the furore which led to Welby’s resignation.

Is it a victory for safeguarding? Possibly but those who feel inclined to gloat need to remember that it is much easier to tear down than to build up. How many bishops do you need to work through before you get to one who is senior enough to step up but hasn’t got similar skeletons in their cupboard? How many innocent people have suffered because investigations have been pushed hard and early? There are no easy answers although the fact that we continued to be faced with the hard questions makes a good case for accepting the premise that we live in a fallen and broken world, fragile people who easily find ways to break and to break others.

I expect the wisest of the potential prelates won’t be rushing to step into his shoes and that Welby, while probably not enjoying his route to departure, will be rather glad to take them off.

11 November 2024
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MSG

For a small percentage of readers of this blog, MSG might bring to mind the Michael Shenker Group, a heavy metal group formed in 1979 around a virtuosic guitarist. I imagine most will think instead of Monosodium Glutamate, a flavour enhancer that is often demonised as a great harm to health.

In recent years, I’ve seen quite a lot of arguments that it isn’t as bad as many once thought. It simply captures the ‘umami’ flavour that also comes through natural ingredients like mushrooms and allows you to enhance the savoury nature of a dish. Often it allows you to use less salt, another taste that enhances flavour but which can have negative effects if used in excess.

I picked up a packet of this fine white powder recently and have been experimenting with how to use it effectively. What is enough to make a difference but not so much that it makes the dish simply taste like a highly processed food (the type of thing that often overuses MSG)? I’m still getting there but hope to get it under control as another element in my seasoning arsenal.

10 November 2024
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Room Reorganising

I’ve been doing some room reorganising in my study / music room this weekend to try and reduce clutter and make things easier to get to. Previously I had a computer desk in front of a book case in front of some more shelving, which was far from ideal.

It isn’t quite perfect, as I didn’t want to embark on major reconstruction of some of the woodwork, but it does feel improved and I look forward to seeing how it feels in use over the next week or two.

8 November 2024
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Fawkes Bitter

On Tuesday this week, I started another batch of beer. As you might remember, that was 5th of November so I’ve christened this one Fawkes Bitter as a suitable name for an F-B brew on that date. The recipe is based on Graham Wheeler’s Burton Bridge XL Bitter and isn’t one I’ve tried before although I’ve done enough with similar ingredients to be hopeful it will turn out well. I hit an initial gravity of about 1.040 (compared to the 1.039 target) which I’m pretty pleased about, especially given that I’m continuing with my 30 minute mash and 45 minute boil regime rather the 90 minutes suggested for each in the original recipe. It still takes somewhat more than 75 minutes from start to finish but a lot less than 180 minutes plus time for weighing ingredients and getting the liquid to the target heat points.

I also tried a sample of the Loco Beer I brewed last month. This one is tasting good and is one of the clearest brews I have knocked up recently. The bottling method (transferring to a container to measure while filtering out most of the trub and then back into the cleaned fermenter to bottle) seems to have worked well and I’ll probably try that again with this one.